Shmuel Halkin

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Shmuel (Samuil) Salmanowitsch Halkin ( Russian Шмуэл (Самуил) Залманович Галкин ; born November 23 . Jul / 5. December  1897 greg. In Rogachev ; † 21st September 1960 in Moscow ) was a Belarusian - Russian Yiddish -schreibender poet , writer , Playwright and translator .

Life

Halkin was the youngest of nine children and grew up in a Hasidic family. He was raised by his eldest brother, who was enthusiastic about Hebrew and Russian literature and introduced him to the works of Yehuda ha-Levi and Solomon ibn Gabirols . In 1917 Halkin went to Kiev to study painting .

After the October Revolution , Halkin came to Yekaterinoslav , where he published his first Yiddish poems in 1920 in the anthology Trep (The Staircase) edited by Perez Markisch . He joined a Zionist group (until 1924) and wrote Hebrew poems. His first collection of Yiddish poems, Lider (songs) , appeared in Kiev in 1922. In the same year he went to Moscow.

Halkin's poems have appeared in leading Moscow Yiddish newspapers. The doyen of Soviet Yiddish literature at the time, Moische Litwakow, characterized Halkin as a deeply Sovietized national poet. Halkin's second anthology, Wej un mut (worry and courage) , published in 1929, made his view of the two sides of Soviet reality clear. Like others, Halkin was criticized in 1929 for his lack of optimism and predilection for Jewish subjects. Then he adapted himself to socialist realism , but remained true to the classical traditions, as his volumes Kontakt (1935) and Lider (1939) showed.

Like other Soviet Yiddish poets, Halkin worked as a translator and playwright. Shakespeare's King Lear in Halkin's translation with Solomon Michailowitsch Michoels in the lead role was performed with great success in 1935 at the Moscow State Jewish Theater . Halkin arranged Abraham Goldfaden's melodramas Bar Kochba , or The Last Days of Jerusalem (1937) and Sulamith or Daughter of Jerusalem (1938) for Soviet stages, which resulted in two dramatic poems (1939 and 1940). Aron Scheftelewitsch Gurstein agreed with him critically for the representation of the Jewish struggle for freedom in Roman Palestine in accordance with socialist realism.

Halkin's grave in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery

During the German-Soviet War , Halkin was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and co-editor of the Ejnikajt . One of the most important poems in Soviet poetry on the Holocaust was his poem Tife griber, rojte lejm - hob amol gehat a hejm (deep graves, red clay - I once had a home) . After the war he published the two volumes Erdische wegn (Earthly Paths) (1945) and Der bojm fun lebn (The Tree of Life) (1949).

In 1949 Halkin was arrested for persecution by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. As a result of a heart attack in prison, he was taken to a hospital and was not shot like his fellow prisoners Perez Markisch, David Hofstein , Itzik Feffer and Leib Kwitko . Halkin first came to Abes' disability camp in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Komi . In 1955 he was released from the Gulag and returned to Moscow rehabilitated. The prison experience was in 1955 the poems The widuj fun Sokrat (The Confession of Socrates ) dedicated to the first in the Paris Zajtschrift appeared from 1956 to 1957, and other poems in the cycle of poems (to tell in joy) In Frejd to erzejln (1950-1958). After his death, these poems were included in the anthology Majn ojzer (My treasure) . Shortly before his death, Halkin took part in the Yiddish magazine Sovetish heymland . He wrote an autobiography that appeared in 1959.

Halkin's life's work are his many poems. Anna Andrejewna Akhmatowa , Marija Sergejewna Petrowych , Iossif Gurewitsch and Lev Sacharowitsch Ginsburg translated Halkin's works into Russian . Halkin's cousin Shimon Halkin translated Halkin's poems into Hebrew. Mieczysław Weinberg set Halkins songs to music and used a poem text by Halkins for the 4th movement of his 6th symphony (Dug a ditch in red clay .... ).

Halkin was married. His daughter Emilija († 2005) was a sculptor . She created her father's grave monument in the Novodevichy Cemetery , was married to the poet Itsche Boruchowitsch (1923–1972) and lived in Israel since 1976 . Halkin's son Wolf was a civil engineer , emigrated to Israel in 1991 and died in 1997. Halkin's three grandchildren live in Israel.

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f The YIVD Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe: Halkin, Shmuel (accessed January 28, 2019).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Elektronnaja evreiskaja enziklopedija: Галкин Шмуэль (accessed on January 29, 2019).
  3. ↑ a b c d ЕВРЕЙСКИЙ ПОЭТ САМУИЛ ГАЛКИН (ШмУэл hАлкин) (accessed January 29, 2019).
  4. ↑ ЕВРЕЙСКИЙ АНТИФАШИСТСКИЙ КОМИТЕТ: ... И КОНЕЦ К 59-летию расстрела руководства Еврейского Еврейского Антифаш January 29, 2019 (accessed January 29, 2019.
  5. ↑ Галкин Самуил Залманович: Автобиография . In: Советские писатели . Гос. изд-во худ. литературы, Moscow 1959 ( detskiysad.ru [accessed January 29, 2019]).
  6. ^ Mieczysław Weinberg: Jewish songs: op. 17; second cycle; based on poems by Shmuel Halkin; for high voice and piano . Peer-Musikverlag, Hamburg 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Halkin, Shmuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halkin, Schmuel Salmanowitsch; Halkin, Samuil Salmanowitsch; Галкин, Самуил Залманович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian poet, writer, playwright and translator who writes Yiddish
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Rogachev
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1960
Place of death Moscow